The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters
by guccileopard
Summary: Dr. Mel Azuin has a reputation that precedes her of rehabilitating seemingly hopeless criminals. But it seems there's something just as wrong with her. As she and an incarcerated Dr. Crane speak in riddles, the Joker begins his wave of crime and the Batman slips deeper in to the dark, all to meet together in madness. Includes plots from Batman, Joker, Crane, and an OC villain.


**The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters**

A Batman Trilogy Fanfic by Kaily a.k.a. guccileopard a.k.a. hybriseris

Featuring: Batman, The Joker, Scarecrow, and a villainous OC

Rated: T for gore, violence, and some sexuality

Welcome home.

_He was choking. His cowl was too tight, a vice grip around his neck that only added to the sense of doom that was curling in around his brain. He struggled to listen to the sound inside his Batsuit, for the bleep of his vital signs crashing, for the sterile warning voice of the operating system, for any sign that he was in fact giving in to whatever dark shadow crept over him. It was the only thing that left him clinging to sanity as he fell in to Crime Alley on a dark night so many years ago. _

_"No, no..." he moaned weakly. It didn't seem to stop the vision - but he'd forgotten it was a vision hadn't he? _

_It was the moment the bullet flew, a strange fateful display of the casual trick that life had played on a more delicate version of himself. When it exited the barrel of the gun it came not with a bang, but a sound like glass breaking. He watched his father topple, a strange rose-like bloom of flesh peeling out from the force of impact as he rotted almost instantly, a skeleton flecked with bits of flesh pocked by maggots. When his Mother followed suit - her face falling apart horridly like some terrible parody of a clown, her eyes sinking down her cheeks and her jaw going slack and opening to inhuman proportions - he watched everything unzip._

_Clarity seemed especially strange then but it was the only way he could describe it: unzipping. The blood-red brick of the wall gave way to something beneath, the ground separating in to tiles that somehow still held them up despite the blank spaces that led in to nothing but dense, red fog below. The world tore perfectly down the middle, as if opening at the seams, and he watched a monster climb out. All in black, it slunk towards him, every once in a while twitching in a way that made his skin crawl. _

_His dead parents were lying on the ground a few feet away, their skeleton-jaws clacking up and down as they sucked air in to no where. _

_The monster knelt down, reaching down and slipping a finger beneath the edge of his cowl. "What do you see, little Bat?" she asks, her voice insectile and metallic, a strange edge he doesn't remember. _

_"Fear looks so perverse on you," she murmurs, moving her fingers to cradle his chin. "I like it."_

_She smiles and her teeth turn to fangs._

* * *

**A FEW MONTHS EARLIER...**

"I don't believe we've had the pleasure of formally meeting, Dr. Azuin," the man says, holding out a large, meaty paw for her to shake. Her delicate hand is rather dwarfed in his but it doesn't faze her. "I'm Warden Sharp, Director of the Asylum. Henry assures me he's selected you quite carefully, though if I'm not mistaken your work precedes you any way," the Warden says, laying it on quite thick.

They must have been more in need of her than any of them were letting on.

Henry - or as he was professionally known, Dr. Henry Beaureault - was the man who'd hired her upon receiving her resume. While it was, of course, the Warden's final decision to take her on, it hadn't seemed as if there was much deliberation.

She followed the Warden as he took her down the corridors, deeper in to the spiraling labyrinth that was Arkham Asylum. It was said that man who built and began the place came to be a patient as well and Dr. Mel Azuin could believe it - the strange lighting, the random twists and turns...she believed it was built by someone subtly disturbed.

"We're quite pleased to have you on staff with us doctor; as you know, the hospital has come under a decidedly...unfavorable light lately, and your work back in New York is very impressive. We're hoping you can make some headway with our more difficult patients," the Warden continued, his hands clasped behind his back.

He wasn't kidding.

Only a few months prior, Gotham had been terrorized by a masked man known as the Scarecrow. Gassing his victims with a serum of his own invention, he had played up their worst fears and made them hallucinate that those things were imminent. Chaos reigned in the streets of the Narrows when he released it on the populous, and Mel could only imagine the panic in the streets, the disorder that followed. Fear was a powerful tool, a catalyst of change, and she doubted that the things people had seen would leave them stable. And worse - the Scarecrow was none other than Arkham Asylum's star doctor, Dr. Jonathan Crane. It was a blow not only to the Asylum, but to the profession as a whole. When the doctor who claimed to be making such headway suddenly lost himself, what did that say about all of them?

Mel quickly changed her train of thought.

"I'm sure the rest of your staff are more than capable Warden, but it will be my pleasure to assist them. I'm sure they can teach me a thing or two," Mel replies, unwilling to step on any toes. "We don't have any patients of Gotham's...caliber, I'll say, in New York."

The Warden snorts in reply to her tactfully worded comment, a surprising sound coming from a man with so many aires. "That's one way to put it Dr. Azuin - I appreciate the brevity." He leads her deeper. She's already been on a tour of the rather...freakish facilities if she's being honest, but hasn't had the pleasure of the Warden's company. He promised her a walk to her new office before her first day's work.

Dr. Mel Azuin, classically trained in psychiatry and abnormal psychology, was an ambitious and renowned doctor. Six years in the field had left her with a laundry list of accomplishments both startling and impressive. The first to claim that it was through no special intellectual gift, Mel merely had an obsessive drive that drove her to push harder and reach farther and brought her to this place in her career.

It was her work in rehabilitating the criminally insane that caught Henry Beaureault's eye when she left her resume with Arkham Asylum.

And no wonder - she had only been assigned a small amount of patients to make rounds with for her first few weeks but she had seen the list of all the patients and it was formidable: the Calendar man, Killer Croc, Mr. Freeze, Victor Zsasz, Poison Ivy, Clayface, Deadshot...and Jonathan Crane himself, trapped within the place he used to rule. She knew why she had been accepted so quickly after her work back home, and all she wanted in return was freedom to conduct a study of her own.

"Did Dr. Beaureault mention my interest in conducting a study on dreams and the sleep cycle here, Warden?" she said quietly, sure that 'studies' of any kind would be a touchy subject around the asylum after Crane's experiments with fear.

As she watched Sharp's face fall, she knew her assumption was right.

"He did, but as I'm sure you can understand, we're not entirely open to the notion of studies conducted under our roof at the moment, Dr. Azuin," he replied, his tone brooking no question.

Unwilling to have her file earmarked on the first day, she kept her mouth shut, though the interest in what she intended to be her life's work was only piqued by his refusal. Instead, she made easy conversation with him on the way to her office, discussing her plans for her first rounds of the day and what she could expect from her co-workers and those around her. And he double-checked that she'd been appraised of the safety regulations and protocols. She assured him that despite the lengthy memo, she would be taking her time and sure to stay safe.

He left her in her new office - a room just as strangely lit and oddly built as the rest of the Asylum - where she put down her briefcase and laid out the case files, arranging them in order of whom she'd be meeting that day. In the back of her mind, the niggling urge to get permission for her study wouldn't leave her alone.

And beneath her fingertips, Dr. Jonathan Crane's file lay open and waiting in front of her.

* * *

Somewhere far away, on the other side of a city plagued by the need to cannibalize itself, a man dragged grease paint over his face. He is quiet for once, no cackle pulling from his throat, no "um's" humming from between his lips as he presses some paint in to the creases of his scars. He likes the relief the bright paint pulls from the tissue, a macabre detail he finds seems to stick with those who see him. Despite the quiet, he can't seem to help flicking his tongue over his lips, the paint taste coating his tongue and staining his teeth as he makes the finishing touches.

Big things would be happening Gotham, of that he was certain. THAT was the only thing that was certain.

* * *

**Author's Note: So for those of you who've read other things by me, you were probably like WHERE'S THE LONG-ASS AUTHOR'S NOTE!? haha! Well, I didn't ruin want to ruin the atmosphere of the beginning with my rambling so here it is instead. :P**

**Welcome to my first Batman story! For any of you who know me, he's my true passion and I'm excited to write something. Despite all appearances, this fic will include viewpoints from every one, not just my OC! Focused mainly around Batman, Scarecrow, the Joker, and Mel, this fic will include lots of different villains and heroes, and should be a real roller coaster ride! We'll be traveling through both TDK and TDKR, and I hope we all have a blast! Expect lots of twists and turns - we're in for it dudes.**

**This chapter is also quite a bit shorter than most of you are used to with me, but I just wanted to get an introduction out there for every one to get started with.**

**I'm open to requests and suggestions. There will be some romance in here at some point, but done right and slow! :)**

**Reviews are my LIFE blood - seriously, drop me a line. I love talking to you guys so much, and hearing your thoughts or even if you just want to say hi. OR IF YOU WANT TO TELL ME HOW SUPER AWESOME YOU THINK BATMAN IS BECAUSE HOLY SHIT ME TOO. **


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